shutdown deadline. the bill passing today after house speaker paul ryan squashed a rebellion among conservatives demanding a longer stopgap bill. the short-term measure now heads to the senate. that goes through december 22. minnesota senator al franken confirmed today he will resign in the coming weeks. more than half of his democratic colleagues, including several women, demanded he step down after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. a shooting at a new mexico high school left two students and the suspect dead today. schools were closed for the day. police have not released any details about the shooter, but confirmed the other two people killed did attend the aspect high school -- aztec high school. president trump's lined -- trump this, a proclamation on the 76th anniversary of the attack. "ou rr nation pauses to remember

paul -- pearl harbor." global news, 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: i'm emily chang. this is "bloomberg technology." coming up, qualcomm's ceo opens up for the first time on the broadcom takeover. billionisses a $105 bid as a potential lowball offer. bitcoin roars past $16,000 for the first time. and america's aia addiction continues to hit home. .ur exclusive interview with

first, our lede. qualcomm's ceo speaks for the first time publicly since broadcom's offer of $70 per share. he weighed in on broadcom's offer. >> there is not much more i can say than what was in the press release, which essentially is that we didn't think the offer was in the ballpark of value and there is a lot of uncertainty or at least unknown timing related to regulatory and -- justu look at our board, speaking as one person, it's a pretty strong board. emily: just speaking as one for more, i wang in bloomberg's ian king. this is the first time we are hearing from steve mollenkopf personally. is this a negotiating tactic? ian: he is very careful to say, if we get enough value, but he has to say that on behalf of his company.

think --, why do you what do you think is the significance of the fact that he has personally said not in the ballpark? ian: he went on in that presentation to talk at length about the way his company is running, how it will get through all these issues that it has that it's stock price is at a low point at the moment. emily: you have been covering the chip industry for years. what's your hunch on how this plays out? ian it depends on a number of ian: it depends on a number of variables. if they can get that done, then that puts them in a much stronger position. if they could get some sense that some of these legal battles, say with ian: it depena number of apple, are coming to a conclusion in their favor, a much stronger position .roadcom has emily: what's the timeline for potentially closing the nxp deal

? ian: he said, by the end of the year, we are kind of hopeful, but maybe early next year. , then if that happens that puts them in negotiation-land with nxp shareholders. the pressure is on him to pay more. he said there would be discussions if he found himself in that situation. emily: what about the situation with apple? that's only gotten more antagonistic. ian: it seems like just when they have uncovered every stone in the legal world to throw at each other, then they find something else and they sue each other for new patents they have found as recently as last week. it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. all of the analysts and investors say apple has no incentive at all to not drag this on. emily: what does broadcom say? no backing down, right? ian: we think that these people are in a better position to take this whole company forward.

it's a bold statement. pf saidon -- mollenko that's not really a friendly maneuver. it's not an approach we understand. it's not looking like a very conciliatory approach at this point. emily: the earnings yesterday were strong, but they do take a view of the future, but don't put a timeline on when that future arrives, when they will see increased margins and all of that. explain. ian: the numbers were, as may have been over the last few quarters for broadcom, much better than expectations, and they said they will get better as well. but they dumbed down a little bit of the enthusiasm. we are only going to grow 5% long-term. emily: so, what does long-term mean? ian: exactly. this has been the -- this is their competing view of the semiconductor industry. we are a 20% growth industry over time. all these new opportunities, cars, 5-g -- they are saying, no, don't get

carried away. this is about consolidation. this is about getting the most profitability out of what we are good at. emily: i know you will keep us posted on all the latest. ian king. thank you. another top story of the moment. we continue to track the price and the frenzy around bitcoin. bitcoin had one of the wildest sessions ever, crossing the $16,000 mark, just three days before cboe debuts futures on the cryptocurrency. the rbs chair spoke to "bloomberg surveillance" about what is perceived as a bitcoin bubble. >> i'm afraid that this is irrational exuberance. this is, as greenspan's famous phrase -- he found the market cap to ongoing up after he said it should stop -- market kept on going up after he said it should stop. he found the market cap to

we are not in a normal trading market. even in the biggest rises, you have some people trading in and out. we are in very unusual territory here. it's a great chart, tom, but i'm not sure that normal, rational market analysis can really illuminate this well. tom: you are the most qualified person in the world to talk about derivatives in wall street. you made regulation work in the united kingdom. should cme and the cboe -- should the americans derivative market make a formal market in this thing we are seeing in this chart right now? >> i think i would counsel them not to at this point, because i'm not quite sure that they know enough about what the underlying is, about the nature of the supply and demand of the underlying asset. so, i think it would be a very risky move in reputational terms for them to go in that direction now. >> we are understanding that, for example, the cftc are

aoking at stress tests and lot of clearing before these contracts are given the green light. could futures put an end to bitcoin if it doesn't go well? but iuppose it could, just don't know how you would price of future at this point. maybe there is someone smart enough to do it, but the normal way in which you would price of future i think would be very difficult to adapt to this instrument. >> how do you see blackcha -- blockchain developing? the underlying technology could be used in other ways. howard: i think blockchain is much more interesting. banks are a bit cautious about the security of it, but i do think that the idea of distributed ledger, which makes transactions and payment systems much cheaper and faster in real

time, is a good one. blockchain, i think has got life in it. emily: that was rbs chairman howard davies. last month,time, is a autodesk d it is restructuring its business to focus on cloud and subscription services. we will hear from the ceo next. and bloomberg technology is live streaming on twitter. check us out weekdays at 5:00 p.m. in new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

electricneral announced plans to slash about 18% of its power business

workforce. the job cuts total nearly 20,000 this year. the new is part of ceo's plan to eliminate $3.5 billion of expenses across the company by the end of the year. software firm autodesk recently announced an aggressive restructuring plan to prioritize its subscription services. it also cut more than 1000 jobs. while the company says this should streamline its business, the stock tumbled dramatically on the news. cory johnson is standing by with the ceo of autodesk. cory: andrew anagnost joins us now from all the way across the street. is such anodesk interesting company, both what the products do, the way you sell it, and the way you are changing the business. can you describe the markets that are most important to autodesk right now? andrew: there are several markets that are core to us. we are also a big player in the

product design and manufacturing space. what's becoming a super important emerging market is construction. we have always been big in the a and e in aec. we are becoming big in the c. the whole industry is digitizing. if you work in procurement and design into the process, you will work a lot faster and have cheaper products. andrew: it's even more than that. construction is industrializing. construction processes are beginning to look a lot more like manufacturing processes. cory: you guys are in the midst of this big change in the business model, particularly the move from maintenance to subscription. how that's maybe a little bumpier than you would have thought. the stock took a big hit last week. in context, you're still up about 72% for a two-year stretch, which is a pretty good run. andrew: we announced rate

results. we hit our goals. we exceeded a few. cory: 5% sales growth year over year. andrew: we returned to revenue growth. we were going through the dip. now we have returned to revenue growth. we did exactly what we said we were going to do. i just think people expect us to do a little more. cory: why would a customer strip -- switch from maintenance to a subscription-based fee for your service? andrew: most of our customers are seeing companies like salesforce, workday, office 260 -- 360. the way they buy software is subscription-based. yeah,ustomers are saying, this is the way the software industry is going, so there is not a lot of resistance. maybe from the smallest customers, but not the big ones. cory: i talked to a lot of people, getting ready for today. one of the questions i kept

hearing was about the timing of the restructuring. why do it now, and what does it have to do with your long-term 2020 free cash flow goals? andrew: there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there. one of the things -- there is that famous john f. kennedy quote, "the best time to fix your roof is when the sun is shining." we knew we needed to invest more strategically in digitizing the company and in particular, in construction, the money wasn't where we needed it. we are going to invest every penny back into the company in the next six to 12 months. this is a reshuffling of where we are spending the money. cory: what does that mean for headcount? andrew: we will be as big a company a year from now as we were before the restructuring. cory: where do those resources have to be? andrew: we had a bunch of initiatives that weren't core to what we were trying to do, driving the subscription

transition, digitizing the company, reimagining construction and manufacturing. we essentially took out entire projects, and we are shifting the money over to those things that are important. cory: there is concern over the subtraction number. projects, and we are shifting the money over to those things just how many customers -- the subscription number. just how many customers are joining the subtraction service. talk to me about the late -- about what the story is there. andrew: we delivered a solid result on the core, which is really what matters. you can't deliver the renew -- the recurring revenue growth without thejust how many custome subscription number. strength. cory: you get down to a unit number, revenue per subscriber, maintenance per subscriber. when those neighbors come down -- those numbers come down, that starts to matter a lot more. andrew: here's the exciting thing, the revenue per subscriber on the subscriptions that matter is up 20% year-over-year. what they got spooked by, and

it's natural, because it is a complex transition -- we just said we are going to do fewer clouds subscriptions and those cloud subtractions aren't important to our two-your goal because -- two-year goal. they are small relative to our core, small revenue per customer. but they are going to be bigger 3, 4, 5 years out. they are small relative to the two-year goals. development, innovation, the kind of things you want to innovate around? in terms of your investment? andrew: we will be investing a lot in reimagining how people do construction and manufacturing processes. you probably know this. construction is the lowest invested in i.t. right next agriculture in the u.s. in europe, it's below agriculture, i think. this industry needs to be transformed, and it's investing crazy in digital technologies now. so, when you look forward, we

are going to be helping our construction customers become manufacturers of buildings. that's an exciting opportunity. cory: everyone watching this right now can look out at the majors these -- major cities, cranes allywhere, over downtown san francisco. 30 percentaverage, or 40% of what you see on that site is wasted. cory: i appreciate your time. glad to have you talking with us, ceo of autodesk. back to you. emily: thank you, cory johnson. coming up, at&t and the department of justice step inside the courtroom. what a federal judge had to say about the impending antitrust case. and a feature i want to bring to your attention. our interactive tv function. find it at tv on the bloomberg. you can send our producers a message, play along with the charts we show you on air. this is for bloomberg subscribers only. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: disney is tapping into the tech world. luminaand the head of will join the board on february 1. the expansion of the board coincides with talks disney is holding to buy the entertainment assets of 21st century fox. ceo bob iger is scheduled to require -- retire in july, 2019, suggesting that successors will have to be vetted next year. at&t and the department of justice squaring off in court. a federal judge says the antitrust lawsuit will go to court next year. the doj is trying to block at&t's takeover of time warner.

intelligence's senior analyst for litigation joins us now. what happened in the courtroom today? >> i wasn't actually in the courtroom today, but i did get a pretty good run down as to what went on -- rundown as to what went on. the judge said, i'm setting march 19 as the trial date. this is between what the company had requested and the department of justice had requested. it is quite a bit closer to the company prostate -- company's date. what happens between now and the trial start date? >> normally what would happen next is the companies would file an answer to the department of justice's complaint, but they jumped in and did that right away, so that's finished.

most of what's going to go on between now and then is additional discovery, the collection of data, this -- documents, and statements. most of what's going to go on between now and then is additionalit's remarkable deparf justice might need to continue to do more discovery here when they've already been investigating for a year, but they have said there is more they think they need in order to go to trial on this case. of course, the companies themselves haven't really engaged in that kind of investigation at all and will be seeking documents from the department of justice, as well as possibly other third parties. emily: how many days is the trial likely to last? jennifer: the judge estimated about three weeks. i took a look at the last three trials in which the department of justice was challenging a deal. the last one being about a year ago. it was the merger of two radioactive waste disposal companies. in that case, the trial lasted just a couple weeks. i've seen them last about four weeks, two weeks to four weeks. this judge estimated about three weeks, right down the middle. emily: is there a possibility this case could settle before it goes to trial?

jennifer: settlement talks can be ongoing at any time in any litigation. they can occur in the middle of trial, the eve of trial, or right at the end of trial. i imagine the department of justice and the companies may talk a little bit, but it seems like they are at an impasse, and i'm not sure how that can be bridged. if the department of justice is looking for structural remedy, as in selling off assets like theer or directv, and companies are only willing to engage in behavioral remedies, which would regulate their conduct after they have merged, i don't see what the middle ground is there, and it doesn't look like a settlement can be reached. emily: jennifer, i understand you have closely looked at arguments on both sides. who has the better case? jennifer: my feeling still here is that the companies have the better case. i think the department of justice is sort of going against their own guidelines, going against -- i wouldn't call it precedent, because it is not technically president -- but going against the practice of

both the department of justice and the federal trade commission for about the last 40 years in their treatment of article mergers and in their treatment of the procompetitive effects of those mergers, as well as the kind of remedies they enter. where vertical deals like this one, which is not combining competitors, have raised antitrust harms in the past, it's usually been remedied with behavioral conditions, like the companies have offered in this case. emily: so, does that lead you to believe this is politically motivated? jennifer: you know, i think that is really just a difficult call to make. i just can't say. because there is validity and feasibility in the department of justice's arguments. a vertical deal can raise the kinds of harms that the department of justice is alleging here, and it really comes down to what the economic analysis looks like. we would really have to get into the weeds to understand that, and we don't know what they're it can't miss have done and what -- what their economists have

done and what those studies look like. will it be profitable in the long term for the company staying gauge in a strategy where they withhold their content from other distributors, even if they take a short-term hit by doing that? it's going to come down to that economic analysis and what the companies' documents say. emily: i know you will keep us updated, jennifer rie. thank you so much for breaking it all down. coming up, the holiday shopping season is underway as the fight for your living room heats up. we will talk to the brain behind amazon's alexa on its new key features. check us out on the radio. listen on the bloomberg radio app and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

alisa: i'm alisa parenti in washington, and you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of your "first word news." the house has passed a stopgap spending bill.

the measure passed mostly along party lines. it will keep the government running through december 22. the senate is expected to vote on the bill in the next few moments. the house vote came after president trump and congressional leaders in both parties met to discuss a range of unfinished, bipartisan business on capitol hill. officialpalestinian says representatives will not meet with vice president mike pence during his upcoming visit to the region because of the u.s. recognizing jerusalem as israel's capital. the official is also calling for other arab leaders to decline a meeting with pence. the vice president is expected to visit israel and the west bank later this month. wildfires continue to burn across southern california. the blazes are forcing a wave of new evacuation and shutdowns on major roadways. more than 2000 firefighters have been deployed. authorities have warned that conditions could actually get worse. british prime minister theresa may hasn't given up on meeting

deadline for.u. coming up with brexit proposals. she is preparing another plan on what the border on ireland and northern ireland would look like after brexit. may has run into opposition from her own cabinet and political backers in northern ireland as well. the european council president will reportedly make an address tomorrow morning. the wall street journal reports the buyer of that $450 million vincing that da created is saudi arabia's crown prince. the journal cited u.s. government intelligence and the middle eastern art world figure familiar with the purchase. christie's says it will be displayed at the loop -- louvre in abu dhabi. global news, 24 hours a day, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm alisa parenti. this is bloomberg. more of "bloomberg technology"

is next. ♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. in 2014, amazon introduced the echo, a new category of device

designed around your voice. the echo was initially available only to invited amazon prime members. that changed in june, 2015, when both the echo and alexa were introduced to the public. we caught up with the vice president of amazon and vice prez -- and head scientist of alexa to ask how many skills alexa will have in five years. >> the skills will continue to improve daily convenience as we know it. everything is changing in terms of the behaviors of how we interact with alexa. you set your alarms and timers through alexa. you listen to your music through alexa. you control your smart devices through alexa. next, we will find that we are transforming from more natural transactions to more deep conversations. if you look at this, we have been working on what we call the alexa price competition, where the goal is to build social

bonds. this is incredibly hard. party -- atman in a a party where you have to talk to a stranger, 20 minutes is a very hard barrier to beat. emily: are you focused then on making alexa more humanlike and more conversational? >> absolutely. we are focused on making alexa smarter every day and humanlike as well. from that perspective, we are looking into how alexa can understand many different types of contexts. a lot of the common contexts that we as humans are able to do quite well is how we carry information from the previous term. play -- what's the first album from adele and then play it? then you know the reference is the first album from adele. similarly, context comes in various forms in terms of geographical and regional context. if you are saying, when are the spurs playing next, we mean

spurs in the u.s., the san antonio spurs, whereas in the u.k., it will mean the soccer team, tottenham spurs. these are some ways we are making alexa smarter. this will just keep getting better and better. emily: do you think you will be able to figure out how to get alexa to understand when you are talking to her rather than when you are talking about her? >> absolutely. that's something we are also working on. in terms of differentiating when you are intending to speak to alexa. you already see some of that happening when you say alexa in a different context, when it's not meant for the device to listen in. it may wake up because you said the same word, but then it will automatically shut the audio stream, knowing that you used the word in a different context and you didn't mean to intend "alexa." that's a hard problem for humans to differentiate in a

conversation. what we are doing is personal context. alexa can differentiate who is speaking to her, whether it's you or your wife. --n you play your playlist when you ask to play your playlist, it plays your playlist, rather than your wife's. it knows you are authorized to shop on alexa. it does not need to ask you for a pin. emily: what trends are you seeing in how customers are using this to shop, and what are you doing to encourage them to shop more, aside from sibley discounts? >> alexis -- from simply discounts? >> alexa is about daily use. shopping is, of course, an important aspect, but it's not the only aspect. one of the things is to reduce friction or to make interactions as seamless as possible with alexa. so, when we are seeing that happen very well, if you are

trying to buy the daily consumables or in terms of, like, if you said, alexa, reorder batteries or order batteries, those are working very seamlessly. now, with devices like echo show, we are also making it possible for you to look at what you are buying. if you say, alexa, by a blue shirt -- buy a blue shirt, you can see multiple options that are available, and select by just voice, which makes it seamless to buy things and making it easier when you are looking at stuff that needs to be on the screen, for you to make the decision. emily: i'm curious about privacy. what information is alexa collecting and keeping and then allowing developers to access? >> privacy is, first of all, very important to us. we are very transparent with our customers. in terms of, i will start with,

first, if you look at how the interactions happen with alexa, alexa only listens for the wake word on the device. nothing else. it's looking for that particular snippet of what you said with sounds like alexa. only when it's confident in the wake word was spoken, then it -- d wasdent an awake wor spoken, then it starts speaking to the cloud. the light ring comes on. the light bar comes on on the echo show, which makes it very transparent. we've also made clear that customers can go to their application, the companion application on your smart phone or through the web interface, and look at every entrance you have spoken to alexa that has been recorded in our cloud services. and you can choose to delete them or delete all of them is an option.

the reason that audio data is collected is for making our service is better for you, the customers. emily: i'm curious about partnerships. you have a partnership with microsoft. what can you tell us about the potential for more partnerships? someone whoe to also works on alexa, she said anything is possible when it comes to a partnership with apple or even google, for example. >> we are very open to partnering. we know that our customers will want different choices. if you look at our partnership with microsoft, we are making it easy for microsoft customers who use cortana to talk to alexa and vice versa. we are very open to this kind of partnership we book -- partnership, because we want the best experience for our customers. emily: how do you view the competitive landscape? some people have rave reviews about google home. the homepod from apple is coming

out next year. it's getting more crowded. i think it's great that so many people and companies are interested in this space. i think that's great for our customers. amazon, we are very customer-centric and we work back from our customer needs. we have been privileged to have millions and millions of customers using alexa every day. that has given us clear needs that we need to solve for our customers, so we are focused on that. i would also point out that we are essentially a voice-first interaction paradigm, and that's where our focus is. our most -- mission is to get alexa everywhere, interaction in homes, in cars, on the go, and now even in the workplace. emily: you did just announce alexa for business. what do you think is the potential for alexa in a work context? >> the potential in the workplace is huge. if you think about a simple task like, how many steps you do to

start a meeting, how many times you fumble on your conference phones, it's quite a lot. now you can just say, "alexa, start my meeting," and you are connected with everybody who is supposed to be on the conference. that's just a simple example, but even in terms of through the ability to add, new skills, you can learn new skills for the workplace, where you can order your office supplies. you can order a new printer cartridge, for instance. everything is possible. --hink the workplace just like if you look at the daily convenience, workplace is an important part, where you spend a huge amount of hours. if every step we could make i think theeamless, adoption for alexa and how much it can improve daily convenience for our customers will just keep getting better. emily: and how many scientists do you have working on alexa now? >> [laughter] so, we have several hundred

scientists working on alexa and i think we look at it more from the perspective that, we have so many important challenges to solve and it is still very early in the space of conversational ai. as i mentioned with initiatives alexa prize, the potential impact of conversational ai and ai in general is going to be massive. we want to train more scientists. we partner with academia to add more interest. students, especially people going for graduate studies. we can have more scientists who want to work in this area. emily: i can't let you go without asking about hq2. what's the likelihood that it will be in boston where you are? >> i wish i could tell you that, but i'm not the right person for that. i have no additional information. emily: the mystery will go on

about hq2. rohit prasad. ahead, a jakarta-based company has its eyes on an ipo. andexclusive with the ceo how he is spending off competition. this is bloomberg. ♪ -- fending off competition.

emily: facing growing competition in southeast asia. its ceo is not concerned. he says softbank's investment in uber doesn't matter right now. bloomberg spoke with him exclusively from the year ahead is a summit in jakarta and asked about the competition. >> i think it is one of the most

ethic and innovating battles -- epic and innovating battles in southeast asia. they are both incredible companies for us to compete with . it's an honor to compete with them, the best technology in the space of ride hailing and the largest regional juggernaut with the most amount of funding. it's an incredible challenge to have for go-jek and a big reason why go-jek got to where it is today is because we have been pushed to our limits. we have to hyper innovate in order to adapt. we came out on top in indonesia as a result of that competition. the urge and hunger to innovate. >> you mentioned they are encroaching to a lot of your market share. does it force go-jek itself to change its strategy? >> no, i think our strategy was designed to be resilient against giants. our entire project strategy -- product strategy, our

competitive strategy is designed about flexibility, hyper diversification, and mitigating risk. because we have so many different verticals that interrelate with each other, it's very hard to deal with this animal called go-jek. you think you are competing with us on right hailing, but actually you are competing with us on the user that uses food and ride-hailing. you think you are competing on food, then you realize, wait a minute, this is a digital wallet player that is leveraging that in order to further reinforce its food and transport business. we are a very difficult animal to get. it's a little bit of that business jiu-jitsu we have. that's how we survive and come out on top against some of the largest companies in the world. yvonne: your payment system, you said, is going to grow aggressively.

>> we are actually the only large tech player in indonesia that has an e-money license at that scale that is a fewer tech player -- a pure tech player, or one of the few. the rest of our large players in indonesia don't yet have an e-money license. we are ahead of the curve a lot, but obviously competition will come in and we are fully expecting it and we are embracing competition, because that's what makes our contact -- our product great. go-payk 2018 is when acceptance travels outside of our ecosystem and starts being accepted in a variety of off-line establishments and a variety of online establishments. so, you will see 2018 as the year of partnership. there is a very long queue of partners that are trying to integrate right now. yvonne: what do you make of the

investment softbank has made in uber? could that lead to more consolidation in southeast asia? >> for us, it is extremely important to have the integrity to pursue our mission. that's the only way we will be two steps ahead, by going to our own drum. we have always been the underdog in terms of funding and resource, and we still come out on top, so it's not about how much funding you have. it's about how hungry you are to create exceptional product experiences. emily: that was bloomberg paschi yvonne man with go-jek's ceo. coming up, the seedy underbelly of silicon valley's holiday parties in the midst of a wave of sexual misconduct allegations in tech. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: another woman has come forward, accusing a venture capitalist of sexual harassment.

the author and onto burner is the first to go on the record since -- an entrepreneur is the first to go on the record since the report last week. denied they has allegations. suit.ar is involved in a asked a judge to dismiss the complaint. r's attorneys have subpoenaed -- amidst this wave of allegations of sexual misconduct in silicon valley, a long-standing tech tradition is being scrutinized. tech firms are known for hiring models to run their trade booths to be greeters and such at trade conferences and shows, but this year those requests are changing and in a dubious way. tech companies are paying $50 to

$200 per hour for attractive models to chat up attendees, making them sign nondisclosure agreements and even having them pretend to be friends with employees. this is happening in record numbers, according to local modeling agencies, and it's all coming out against a backdrop of a wave of sexual assault and harassment allegations in silicon valley and beyond. sarah frier has been covering this story for us. disturbing, to say the least. infuriating, as well. what's happening here? sarah: companies are trying to retain these engineers that are so difficult to recruit that are mostly men, and they are trying to add a little bit of excitement to their holiday parties by employing models to chat up their employees. and this has been going on for quite a while. like you said, there is a long-standing relationship between models and tech, in terms of the height cycle, the product launches.

what's change this year more than ever, there is this behind the scenes modeling. it's not that accepted to be so out there about using models as example.ce, for but if you secretly hire them and tell them not to tell your employees that they were paid, then it can make for a great party. emily: and these models are, what, checking coats? or they are just mingling? what are they doing? >> say you wanted to have a 1920's themed party. he would hire a bunch of models --dress in flapper attire you would hire a bunch of models to dress in flapper attire. this is different. this is models pretending they are guests and saying, if you were to come up to me at the party and say, what team are you on, i would say i'm a friend of a friend or i heard about the party and decided to come along. they are not supposed to say they are hired to be there. emily: you are saying this is happening at facebook and google-sized companies. is this happening at facebook

and google? sarah: i pursued this story based on a tip about a party for one of those companies. facebook told me that when it hires models, it's not for this kind of atmosphere modeling. they have jobs like hostessing, serving. emily: does that make it any better? sarah: well, it depends who you talk to. these companies are throwing events, not just for their own employees, but also at trade shows. story, but i the was speaking with modeling agencies that are getting ready to staff up parties at ces. sometimes companies doing ces parties hire many, many more models than they would for an employee party, because that's the part where you are trying to impress clients, vendors, sell products. that gets you more in the hollywood line of work. i talked to one atmosphere model who has gone to these parties and has also in her past done movie premieres, for example. emily: atmosphere models. sarah: atmosphere models.

emily: that's a new term. did you calling that -- coin that? ir eitherah: -- sarah: learned it in the course of this reporting. emily: thank you for sharing with us this dogged reporting. that's it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we will be back tomorrow. this is bloomberg. ♪ retail.

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